Sunday, May 17, 2015

Hello. I'm Glenn, a Labour supporter (further to the left of the political spectrum than Ian), and formerly blogged as the Boiling Kettle. I'm a programmer who lives and works in London.

Like many people, I woke up on Friday
extremely disappointed and quite angry. There are a few ways of dealing with
this – scrawling obscenities on war memorials, for example – but the prospective
leaders of the Labour party are at a fork in the road.

In my opinion, Labour suffered in the
Election because their plan wasn’t really cohesive. “It’s a choice between the
Tories’ failing plan, and our better plan” was their cry, and it failed to
convince enough people. Below this uninspiring headline was a set of policies
that, viewed with 20/20 post-election hindsight, didn’t quite match up.

The mansion tax, while a noble idea in
principle, didn’t win them many friends in London. While campaigning, I spoke
to a man whose semi-detached house in Chiswick was set for a new tax, despite
not exactly being luxurious. Perhaps it could be reformed to somehow take into
account a house’s value relative to its location.

Meanwhile, their stance on immigration,
surely aimed at placating those considering a vote for UKIP, was simultaneously
weak from a right-wing perspective (no fixed limit) and harsh from a left-wing
perspective (no benefits for 2 years). While making ambitious promises about
the NHS (a GP appointment within 48 hours), the overall £2.5bn funding pledge fell some way short of the Lib Dems, instead being comparable with the £2bn pledged by the Conservatives.

So, Labour have a choice to make. They can
creep further towards the centre, in an attempt to win voters from the
Conservatives directly (although they've already suffered criticism for being "Tory-lite"), or they can swing
to the left, to provide a real alternative to the Tories and Lib Dems.

I believe that going hard left is the best
chance Labour have to win in 2020.

The main reason for this is that there’s a
huge part of the electorate out there that hasn’t been sufficiently convinced
to vote by either “Tory lite” Labour or the Greens (or any other party, for
that matter). A charismatic, left-leaning leader could bring them out of the
woodwork.

The disparity between opinion polls and the
election result can be explained by “lazy socialists” not voting. The turnout in England and Wales was a paltry 65%, compared to 71% in Scotland, where the SNP, promising an end to austerity and a
true alternative to the big three, achieved a landslide victory. If Labour take
a leaf out of the SNP’s anti-austerity book, they can galvanise the electorate
and win the next election.

The SNP were carried on a wave of Scottish
nationalism following the independence referendum; while Labour obviously won’t
have this opportunity, they can instead rely on statistics. Austerity has been shown not to work. By promoting this message with the graphs to back it up,
they can do two things that they utterly failed to do this time around: expose
the Tory plans as ideological, and weaken the right-wing media’s case against
them.

Questions will be asked about where the
government’s spending money will come from without austerity. These can be
fielded by being honest and up-front about figures; perhaps a “fully costed”
plan will help Labour here.

Of course, should the Conservatives succeed
in their ideological dismantling of the welfare state, the landscape could be
different in 2020 to the point where people aren’t talking about austerity. In
that case, Labour can propose something which the Tories would never be trusted
to do: restore our public services, and bring back the NHS.

1 comment:

- How much do you think a Labour Party taking a left turn, as you suggest, could learn from left parties elsewhere in Europe such as Syriza and Podemos? The electoral system here in the UK is different of course, but could their example in terms of motivating people who might previously have not voted be learned from?

- Is talking about fully costed plans perhaps counterproductive, in that it accepts the economic status quo and is effectively setting the argument on the Tories' turf?

- More broadly (and I plan to write a lot more about this), I think if it were possible to convince people that austerity is futile, and even counterproductive, then things will start to fall into place. Unfortunately, Labour don't just have to overcome the Tories but also their recent past and aspects of their present. They failed miserably to counter the narrative that they overspent and 'ran up the deficit'. That untrue perception is now firmly cemented in the public mind -- even Labour candidates (Liz Kendall!) appear to believe it -- and it will take a huge effort to shift it.

Contributors

About the authors

Ian: Occasional political blogger, motivated to restart by the outcome of the 2015 election and the need for more reasoned debate and less polarisation. Believer in egalitarianism and in personal freedom. I don't call myself a libertarian any more these days.

Newcastle - Oxford - London - Macclesfield

Glenn:First blogged about student protests in 2010, now back in search of a platform for his left-wing views. Supports voting reform and the NHS. Against austerity and TTIP.